--what some of the communities have gone through. Sure, he finds it funny because he thinks everything Italians do is funny, apparently.
What he would have seen in those pictures in 1983 was no more father around, because that's when my father passed away. He was an extraordinarily proud man. I can tell you something. My mother was 39 years old, with four kids under 20 years of age. She didn't go and hide herself in a closet somewhere and say, “Oh my gosh, I can't handle this life.” She didn't retreat. She moved forward, and today she has a son in Parliament. She was 39 years old, with a grade three education. They were able to build something extraordinary in this country.
If you want to talk about this, I'll talk about this story until tomorrow morning if we have to, because when you bring something like this forward that seeks to divide a community, without putting the thought into it that it deserves and without speaking to anybody....
There are not a lot of Italians in Parliament. It's not very difficult to come across the floor and say, “Hey, look, I want to bring something like this forward. What do you think? How can I improve on it?” On our side, there are three or four of us. It's not that hard to find us. He would have received the comments from me on it and perhaps we could have made it better. But clearly this bill does nothing but divide the community.
The minor amendment he is suggesting doesn't fix the bill. It makes it even worse, because it completely ignores all the extraordinary things, and the apology that was made by Prime Minister Mulroney. What about that apology?
In the interest of allowing other members, I'm sure I'll have some more opportunity to speak to some of the extraordinary things my family has accomplished. That's what I was elected to do and I'll continue to do that. I know some of the other members might have some comments, so I'll allow them to do that, and perhaps in future interventions I'll talk more about some of the extraordinary things my uncles and aunts have accomplished and specifically reference some of the amazing things my mother did as a widow at 39 years of age, with four kids, and how we've managed to build an incredible country. And perhaps then I can talk about some of the things that Italians in Toronto have done to help build that city into the economic engine of this country.
For now, I'll just sum up this way. Obviously I don't support the particular amendment, and I look forward to speaking about the actual clause shortly.